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Sudha Menon

Mr Ravi Nigam, Managing Director, Tasty Bite.

PUNE, March 4

THE ready-to-serve (RTS) foods company, Tasty Bite, is all set to get a larger bite of the rapidly growing packaged food market in India. Come May and homemakers and those in a hurry but with a liking for something more than the ready-to-eat food available on store shelves can look forward to an entire range of curry pastes from the company

"Having made our mark and our niche in the ready-to-serve meals market, we now want to expand our convenience foods portfolio to include even those consumers who love convenience but also want to add their own bit to the food they eat at home," said Mr Ravi Nigam, President, Tasty Bite Eatables.

The company has just soft-launched a basket of eight curry pastes including mutton rogan josh, butter chicken curry, chole masala, Goan fish curry and paneer makhanwala. Vegetarians can also dig into the Chettinad and Kolhapuri Curry Pastes, which can be adapted to both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes.

"In the next 12 months, we plan to launch at least a dozen more such products, which might include all-time favourites from Bengal, Hyderabad and Rajasthan," Mr Nigam said.

The company, which has positioned itself as the "world's smallest multinational", makes one of the largest selling Indian brands in the ready-to-serve foods category in the US. Mr Nigam said the new ready-to-cook venture, designed completely for the Indian market, would help it establish its Indian roots. "In addition to expanding our convenience food platform, the curry pastes will help us give certain products to the market which we would otherwise be unable to serve in the RTS segment."

The company will invest over Rs 10 crore in the entire new product development, which will include the establishment of new lines at its manufacturing facility at Bhandgaon near Pune, Mr Nigam said. The curry paste venture will also allow the company to enter entire newer markets at a time when it is rapidly expanding its presence in the domestic market, according to Mr Nigam.

He said over the next 12 months, the brand would be available in at least 20 large cities, including Kolkata, Jaipur and Lucknow, in addition to those in Kerala. "The new venture will also contribute significantly to our revenues, which will go up from the current level of Rs 3 crore to Rs 15 crore in the next one year," he said.

The company is, simultaneously, undertaking a massive branding exercise (for the first time), and is in the process of identifying an agency to handle its campaign on which it will spend roughly 15-20 per cent of its sales revenues, Mr Nigam said. "The campaign will underline the fact that opting for our products is like bringing home India's finest chefs," he said.

Meanwhile, Tasty Bite is also rapidly growing its business in the US, where it is now moving out of health/natural foods stores into mainstream superstores, according to Mr Nigam, who said that by the end of 2003, the brand will be available in 10,000 retail outlets across 37 States there. The brand is also getting ready to debut in the UK, Japan and Australia in a couple of months from now.

The company is banking on the fact that in the UK, where people are familiar with Indian food, selling its brand of RTS won't be a major problem. Mr Nigam, however, plans to bypass the `Big Six' of retail chains in favour of a clutch of smaller but rapidly-growing independent chains such as Harts, Cullins and Cost Cutter, in addition to the traditional cash-'n'-carry outlets. "An Englishman in the UK perhaps buys more packaged Indian meals than the Indian diaspora there, and we expect to sell meals worth $600,000 in the first year itself."

It is also preparing for a March launch of its brand in Japan, whose denizens are known for their abiding interest in food from all over the world.

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